


Deep Breath - Series 8 - Episode One (Meta/Review)

by Boji



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Review, Meta, Reviews
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-22
Updated: 2014-09-22
Packaged: 2018-02-18 10:57:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2345978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boji/pseuds/Boji





	Deep Breath - Series 8 - Episode One (Meta/Review)

There are some fantastic things about this episode: Acting. Set design. Costumes. CGI… But not plot. Subplot and subtext are both wonderful, and nuanced. Plot is not. At least not if you’re watching with an eye to the murders being committed in the heart of Victorian London and to _Who’s_ oblique nod to _Sweeney Todd._ If the plot-arc you’re watching is one of friends reuniting and re-connecting, well then that’s another matter.

  
The opening of the episode is as big and bold as the Dinosaur that time-travelled and vomited up a TRADIS. It’s also misleading. We’re led to believe there’s been a crime, that the game is afoot _(in carpet slippers and a nightshirt, rather than a deerstalker)_ but the murders, and mysterious cases of spontaneous combustion, are as much misdirection as malevolence.

From the opening of the episode, lady Dinosaur, sets the tone. Wrenched out time and place (only to be murdered and flambeed on the banks of the River Thames) her cry is the one the Doctor responds to. Her words are translated by him in his sleep. And when he stands over her watery grave, he mourns her just as he has mourned every other companion lost, or dropped off, in the wrong place. Was I the only viewer to think of Sarah Jane Smith, in the penultimate scene of the episode? Sarah-Jane, left to make her way home from Scotland? (Aberdeen wasn’t it?) But I digress.

Larger than life. Older than time.  
Out of place. Frightened and alone.  
The Doctor and the Dinosaur.

There are mirrors, literal and figurative _everywhere_ in this episode _(I had to suspend my disbelief _a great deal_ to believe a gilded mirror could be lying discarded in a Victorian alleyway, undamaged - not even a little cracked!)_ leading to the telling moment when Twelve holds up that silver salver to ask the clockwork, half-faced, droid if he even recognises himself anymore. That line, delivered as Twelve looks upon his own recently altered face in the underside of the salver. The _look_ Peter Capaldi / Twelve gives the camera. Moments of acting genius. There is such poetry in his tormented gaze.

A real sense of creepiness and horror pervades this episode, from the obvious and overt - the restaurant which has a children’s menu and harvests organs, a ship full of clockwork cadavers, Clara left trapped behind a porthole once again, facing imminent death. (Oh, how the lighting and set calls to mind the Dalek asylum ship) - to the subtle.

A brilliant man who no longer has a coherent sense of self, who doesn’t remember who he is, nor recall his friends or those who care for him. The nods to mental health and extreme old age did make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The Doctor’s brilliant brain has failed him and the path he walks, across the rooftops of Victorian London, is terrifying and madcap.

“Not me. Me.”

I _loved_ the fact Twelve eschews the door and clambers out of the window. It’s a nod back to the madcap antics of Eleven, a nod to Peter Pan flying off to Neverland through Wendy’s window. But, watching the Doctor wander off in slippers, wearing that Victorian nightshirt, invokes the ghost of King Lear above all. And the moment the Doctor tells the tramp that it’s wet and bitey - that line and its delivery - broke my heart. Belatedly, I learnt the tramp in the alleyway is played by Brian Miller, widower of the late, fantastic, and utterly lovely Liz Sladen. The unwanted subtext in that one fact alone makes the scene even more heart-wrenching. Thank you Steven Moffat.

Heart-wrenching too was the surprise in the penultimate scene, the farewell message from Eleven on the fields of Tenzelore. "It’s your boyfriend", Twelve tells Clara, and all those who (like myself) loved Eleven. Yes, Smith and Moffat played me like a violin fraying my emotions. _Plus ça change_. But what I truly love about the scene is the way it encapsulates the non-linear aspect of the Doctor’s life. He _is_ in two places at once. He is both men and the same man - at once. Lovely to stamp that into plot, indelibly. I always felt Ten/ant had a case of multiple personality disorder, in the way he referred to his previous and future selves as not himself. I’m thrilled we’re past that. Thank you the Moff. Thank you John Hurt’s War Doctor.

Much has been made of Clara’s skittishness and reticence, at the sight of this new, older, Doctor. It is inescapable that she stands in for all viewers here, especially the younger ones. And for them, the Doctor is suddenly oh-so-very-much older. Clara’s journey to acceptance of this change (from wanting him to change back, as Rose once wished Ten to do, to realising he’s barely changed at all) is the emotional arc at the centre of this episode. Her journey of a few steps, from one side of a high-street into anawkward hug is the real journey they - and we - are on.

So, it’s right Madame Vastra should think her prejudiced. But, it’s also very clear Clara doesn’t recognise the Doctor because he doesn’t recognise himself. He acts in ways which are different and deeply frightening, until after he leaves Clara behind and finishes the process of regeneration. New TARDIS. New outfit. Booted and suited he can at least affect confidence, even if it’s a thin veneer of the stuff, just as Nine’s bolshy confidence was when we first met him.

And yet, trapped in a hellish nightmare, lungs burning as she tries to hold her breath, Clara has the strength to keep her faith in the Doctor. She believes he will have her back in the darkest moment. My belief? It faltered, even if this is a children’s show. My belief wobbled completely when Peter Capaldi delivered the line: “Too slow…” and Clara was once more trapped behind a pothole, with a monster. Only with hindsight did I remember the little I know of Four and his journeys with Sarah Jane. Four often plunged her into danger, Sarah Jane having to keep her wits about her. Companions drawing on inner resources, being plucky, lucky, and brilliant? It’s a gorgeous nod back to Classic Who.

Mustering belief and showing mettle, here Clara also has a great deal in common with her alternate selves. Governess and tavern-wench. Soufflé girl, caged in the shell of a Dalek. By jumping into the Doctor’s time-stream, and no doubt by braving the teenagers in her classes, we clearly see Clara has grown and changed. Though the less said about the egomaniac quip which wanted to be a joke, the better. We may not know how much time has gone by for either character, but the Doctor spent three hundred years on Trenzelore and Clara? She completed teacher training and got a job. Time has passed for them, and for us since the last series.

I did like the flashback to Clara’s classroom, and was amused that the girl who back-chats reminds us of Melody, Mark II.

In _Deep Breath_ Steven Moffat plays with preconception. That the Doctor is the hero. That he doesn’t kill. That he prizes his companions above all. As Twelve rediscovers himself, we are asked to question what we to know of him, and to question our own preconceptions. Moffat calls the 21st Century on being lookist, on the fact that we place youth and beauty on pedestals (another possible reason for Jenny posing as she was?) and reminds us that older people become invisible. Madame Vastra (standing in for The Doctor, and the producer/writer) is disappointed in Clara, and therefore in viewer. And her point - that it took trust for the Doctor to be able to regenerate into the body of a man whose outer appearance finally matches his inner experience - is as much about the Doctor having placed his trust in those of us who have been travelling with him since the 2005 reboot, as it is about Clara herself.

The companion is always cypher, but sometimes she surpasses that and becomes far more. A beloved character, a three dimensional, well-rounded, character in her own right. In this episode, far more than in most of Eleven’s run, Clara Oswald is given the chance to do just that. And, though she walks in darkness with the Doctor, it is implied she is being given a chance to walk out of the shadow he casts. It is also brilliantly emphasised that he does indeed need her as much as she might want, or need, him. So it’s fitting this episode should hark back to _Rose_ with the invitation for coffee, or chips, or coffee and chips. For, this Doctor too has just come from the Time War - by way of Christmas. This Doctor is closer to Nine than he’s been for a while.

Funnily enough, and it may be the accent, but on re-watch I got far more of a sense of Ten imbuing Capaldi’s post regeneration performance. But, on first watch, I saw Nine as much as Twelve. Those boots? Maybe...

There are a slew of nods back along the timeline of _New Who_ and probably even more references to _Classic Who_ which I didn’t spot. From the overt: “At times like this I miss Amy” quip, to chips, the clockwork crew mentioned in “Girl in a Fireplace” and even the fact that the Doctor finds bedrooms an alien concept - Oh the bunk beds Eleven and the TARDIS conjured up for the Ponds. And then there’s mention of the scarf. Four’s iconic scarf!!!! I LOVE all the references to his past. After all, if the Doctor were real, and not fictional, he would refer to old friends, places and people. Most people of a certain age do.

Acting-wise Capaldi plays his emotions quietly, viscerally. He is nuanced and doesn’t wear his hearts on his sleeve. Matt Smith, by contrast, projects his emotions (oh so successfully) to the rear of the house. “I sound old. Tell me I didn’t get old.” That disconnect, that disbelief, it's the disbelief of a child viewer. It's also a nod to the change in perspective for adults don't live in the moment the way children do. The days of summer no longer stretch out forever. And, sometimes adults look in the mirror and no longer recognise who they grew up into. Not to mention the fact that adults generally show emotion in a more subtle manner. Twelve is older and more mature. But he's no less the man that Eleven was. And he is both hurt and disappointed. By Clara, by his own expectations. Rejection (whether romantic or not) doesn’t get easier with age.

I love the fact Clara tells the Doctor that he can’t choose if he’s a hugger. That he may get hugged anyway, no matter how prickly the carapace of age and experience. So too the fact that he can’t dismiss himself as not being fetching. He is rather dashing and fetching…

Also fabulous, acting-wise, is the skittish way Peter Capaldi walks on shaky, coltish, legs out onto the high-street in Glasgow. Will we see him stride across expanses and episodes? Yes, I am sure we will. It’s in the way the clockwork droid tells him that he’s stronger than he looks - both physically and emotionally. It’s in the moment, played to camera, after the clockwork man falls - or is helped to fall - to his supposed death.

Capaldi/Twelve looks composed and self-possessed. Long gone is the boyish Eleven. Thus, it is implied again and again in this episode _this_ Doctor is a real grown-up. He offers his foe a final drink - scotch or whiskey. No fish fingers or custard here. And, no matter how unpalatable the course of action he chooses or is forced to take, he doesn’t falter nor run away.

We wanted dark. We got dark. There is darkness, here at the heart of man and timelord.

I don’t know why it surprised me that Twelve retreated and left Clara behind, retreated to pull himself together post-regeneration. After all, Eleven did so too, and it took him _years_ to come back for Amy. I rather love the fact that there are post-regeneration moments he only shares with Sexy. The new desktop? Her new costume? I may prefer it to his! The round things! Bookshelves! Bookshelves with books! And a wingback armchair, however solitary a chair it appears to be.

I love the gentleman’s study feel of the new control room.

Capaldi has talked of wanting to bring back the sense of mystery that was the stuff of the Doctor in earlier series. And, throughout _Deep Breath_ he is properly _other_. He sniffs the floor, talks Dinosaur, and thinks of himself as other. But for me the strongest moment which speaks of this is when Twelve looks on own reflection and asks “Who frowned me this face?” Here, he places himself on a par with the clockwork horror he will later encounter. But his words also make us wonder if the _other_ faces we have seen the Doctor wear, first belonged to other people.

A nod back to “Fires of Pompeii”, yes. But, a question whose answer makes the Doctor seem far more alien than regeneration alone.

In _Deep Breath_ both the Doctor and Clara are tested, while the Paternoster Gang provide comedic relief. I love Vastra and Jenny and wish they’d been given more to do here, despite the lovely acrobatics, costumes and flirting. Straax, although beloved in fandom, remains the weak link in my opinion. But then, I have low tolerance for slapstick. Out of the three characters Madame Vastra is my favourite. She is as much a mirror of The Doctor as a phenomenal character in her own right. And I loved her farewell scene with Clara, advising her to give the Doctor hell - always.

Plot-wise, I have to admit to utter confusion as to who placed the “Impossible Girl” advert in _The Times._ Twelve’s comment to Clara (that there is a women out there who wants them to stay together) makes it obvious he thinks this woman may have placed the advert. Was it Missy? That Victorian garbed, umbrella weilding woman, dancing around a fountain in a garden-heaven that bears more than a passing resemblance to the garden in the Two Streams facility. Is her name a play on words?

Missy/Mistress. Has the Master regenerated?

It’s more than possible. As regards the series arc, Peter Capaldi has been on every chat show the BBC produce, telling people (younger fans) that, this series, they should trust no one. Couple that with the line he utters (standing in the hub of the droid ship) slowly realising he’s not _rebooting_ correctly and his Trenzelore kiss of life becomes suspect. A poisoned gift? A virus which makes of him a trojan horse?

What if the energy was sent, not by the time lord council, but by the Master (now mistress) to somehow subvert the Doctor. Would sacrificing that much life-energy triggered the Master’s own regeneration? This may not be Moffat’s series arc, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is.

If the Doctor is forced or manipulated into a position where he betrays himself and Clara, this also explain the rumours flying from tabloid to Tumblr about Jenna Coleman possibly bowing out on the anniversary of the day we first met her. I have been more than a little ambivalent about _The Impossible Girl_ , throughout most of her journey. It amuses me to think I will come to really like her, just as she’s ready to walk out of the TARDIS, and walk away from the Doctor.

Peter Capaldi a phenomenally good actor which, yes, I did know. He is awesome. I believe in him as the Doctor, but he is not yet mine. To be fair though, I never thought another Doctor would be mine, after Nine. And then Eleven totally stole my heart.

Time will show.

 


End file.
